The Girl in the Fireplace (TV story)
The Girl in the Fireplace 'is the fourth episode of the second series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Steven Moffat, directed by Euros Lyn and featured David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler with Noel Clarke as Mickey Smith. Overview To be added Synopsis The Doctor, Rose and Mickey materialise in the 51st Century on-board a derelict space craft. While searching for the crew, they discover that all of the ship's energy is being diverted to maintain "time windows" - two-way portals in space and time - all of which are pointed at France at various points in the 18th Century. Who is the young woman on the other side who calls for the Doctor by name, and what is the crisis that is about to befall her? And who in the 51st Century is watching all this? Plot In the court of Versailles in 1758, mass panic ensues in the hallways as an unseen assailant stalks. The King of France, Louis XV, hurries into the quarters of his mistress and tells her that they must flee. She turns to him and tells him with confidence that someone is coming; someone who has watched over her whole life and will not abandon her and she tells him to go to his queen. Turning to the fireplace, she shouts into it that the time has come, heralded by the broken clock on the mantle; she cries into the flames for help, calling for the Doctor. On a spaceship, 3000 years in the future, the TARDIS materialises on board, from which Rose and Mickey follow the Doctor out. Mickey is happy that his first trip is to a spaceship and is flabbergasted by the view of space. Scanning the ship, the Doctor doesn't find any life signs but finds all the systems in disarray and all the power being diverted from the thrusters. Opening a sliding door, the travellers find a genuine 18th Century French fireplace with a room on the other side, in spite of the opposing side of the hull being open to space. Suddenly, a little girl named Reinette appears in the fireplace and talks to the Doctor from 1727. When she heads off, the Doctor looks over the mantle, tripping a switch that causes the entire structure to spin and the Doctor to wind up in the little girl's bedroom in Paris, months after they had just spoken. The Doctor spots the broken clock on the mantle and takes note of the fact that there's still ticking in the room, coming from something the size of a man. Telling Reinette to stay on the bed, the Doctor looks underneath and the creature beneath moves to stand behind her. Observing the child, the Doctor finds the creature had been scanning her brain, frightening her; it tells her that she's incomplete but doesn't tell the Doctor what it means by 'incomplete'. It suddenly raises arms against the Doctor and swipes at him; he valiantly draws the creature back to the mantle and triggers it again, rotating it back to the ship in the future where he disables it with a fire extinguisher. Removing it's mask, he discovers it's a droid powered completely by clockwork. Before he can dismantle it, however, it teleports away. The Doctor returns to the other side of the mantle while Rose and Mickey ignore his instruction not to go looking for the droid and go hunting for it with the fire extinguishers. The Doctor looks around Reinette's room for her when he is interrupted by the arrival of a young woman; asking after Reinette, the call of the woman's mother from afar reveals to him that she is in fact the very girl, all grown up. The adult Reinette considers the Doctor curiously and tries to question him when her mother grows impatient. With no time to ask anything, Reinette engages him in an impassioned kiss before heading off. A manservant arrives in her room while the Doctor collects himself and he joyously releases who she is. Laughing off the fact that he was just 'snogged by Madame de Pompadour', the Doctor returns to the ship to find Rose and Mickey gone; he goes to look for them but stumbles across a horse in the corridor. Meanwhile, Rose and Mickey stumble across a security camera with an eye in it and Rose opens up a small vent hatch to spot and human heart wired up in the back of the compartment. The horse continues to follow the Doctor around the ship and he stumbles across a door that the horse came in through. Stepping through it, he winds up in the gardens of Versailles and watches in hiding as Reinette confers with her friend Katherine about meeting King Louis at the upcoming Yew Tree Ball. On the ship, Rose and Mickey find a mirror looking into Reinette's quarters in the palace; the Doctor arrives and ponders on the matter of all the time windows all over the ship leading to points in Reinette's life. Spotting another broken clock and clockwork droid in the back of the room, the Doctor, Rose and Mickey leap through the time window to rescue Reinette from it. The droid doesn't answer the Doctor but obeys the command of Reinette like it did when she was little. It says that the ship was hit by an ion storm and they didn't have the parts to repair it. When the Doctor asks about the crew, it repeatedly states that they didn't have the parts and he realises that, on those grounds, it cannibalised the crew of the ship and used their parts to repair the systems. It then explains that one more part is needed but Reinette is still 'incomplete'. It claims that itself and Reinette are the same and she angrily dismisses it; it teleports back to the ship. Sending Mickey and Rose to follow and watch it's actions, the Doctor stays and tries to telepathically find answers in Reinette's mind. Using the same technique in reverse, Reinette learns about the Doctor and invites him to 'dance'. The Doctor insists that he can't, as this is the night she'd dance with the king, but she nonetheless insists and takes him away. On the ship, Mickey keeps prodding Rose with the Doctor's history with women when they are jumped and drugged by two clockwork droids. They awaken clamped to a table, with the droids primed to disassemble them when the Doctor, apparently drunk, comes swanning in and jabbers on about their plan to take Reinette's brain once she turns 37 when they'd deem it compatible with the systems of the ship, which is also 37 years old. Tipping his glass over the head of a droid, revealing the wine to be anti-oil, the Doctor shuts off the other droids and tries to close the time windows, which won't close with one droid still out in the field. The other droids suddenly spring back into life and teleport away when they receive the report that their absent soldier has found the correct time window. As a precaution, the Doctor sends Rose through a time window to 1753 to warn Reinette of the incoming attack five years later. Against advice, Reinette walks through the time window to the future and accepts what will soon transpire, agreeing to wait on the "slower path" for the moment. Back in 1758, while Reinette calls for the Doctor for help, the King drags her away as the droids capture her and drag her to the main hall where she calms the people and keeps the droids delayed. On the ship, the Doctor is unable to follow the droids through the time windows as they sealed them off to keep him from following. With no other open options, the Doctor uses the horse (which he named 'Arthur') to smash through the time window into the ballroom, severing the link to the ship by destroying all the other time windows as well. Unable to return to the ship, the droids shut down, with their function effectively ceased; the Doctor helps Reinette up while musing that he's trapped himself in 1758 with no way back. While Rose and Mickey ponder on how he could get back, unable to pilot the TARDIS without him, Reinette takes the Doctor back to the recreation of her childhood bedroom, where she'd moved the original fireplace. Since the link to the ship was offline when the mirror broke, the Doctor manages to reestablish it with his sonic screwdriver and returns to the ship. Through the fireplace, he tells Reinette to go to the window and pick a star, planning to take her with him. After telling Rose and Mickey to wait in the TARDIS, however, the Doctor goes back to Versailles and winds up in 1764. Wandering the court, he finds King Louis standing in a low-light, looking out over the gates outside where a hearse takes Reinette's body away for the final time, having died of illness at the age of 43. The King gives a letter Reinette wrote for him to the Doctor and he returns to the TARDIS, heartbroken. After Rose and Mickey leave him alone in the console room, the Doctor reads Reinette's letter in which she details her love for him and her desire to see him one last time in her dying days. After permanently severing the time window, the TARDIS leaves and reveals a portrait of Reinette hanging behind where it once was and the outer hull of the ship reveals it's name to be the SS Madame de Pompadour as it's left to float through space, stoic and silent... Cast * The Doctor - David Tennant * Rose Tyler - Bille Piper * Mickey Smith - Noel Clarke * Reinette - Sophia Myles * King Louis - Ben Turner * Young Reinette - Jessica Atkins * Katherine - Angel Coulby * Manservant - Gareth Wyn Griffiths * Clockwork Man - Paul Kasey * Clockwork Woman - Ellen Thomas * Alien Voices - Jonathan Hart, Emily Joyce Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The Girl in the Fireplace'' page on '''Doctor Who Website